What We Know About Alleged Russia-Hacking-Report Leaker Reality Winner

President Trump has reportedly taken to blaming Attorney General Jeff Sessions for many of his self-inflicted problems, but the Justice Department’s latest move may change his tune (at least temporarily). Administration officials have complained for months that the only White House scandal Americans should be focused on is the never-ending stream of leaks to the press, and now Trump’s Justice Department has brought its first criminal leak case.

On Monday evening, the Intercept published what appears to be a May 5 intelligence report from the National Security Agency that describes two cyberattacks carried out by Russian government hackers against employees of a company that provides technical support to state voting agencies, which occurred shortly before the 2016 election. (The Intercept’s Sam Biddle noted, “There’s nothing in the NSA report indicating the actual voting machines or vote tabulations were compromised” — though this certainly opens up a whole new dimension in the ongoing investigation into Russia’s election meddling and potential contact with the Trump campaign.)

About an hour after the report was published, the Justice Department announced that 25-year-old Reality Leigh Winner, a government contractor, has been charged with taking classified material from a government facility and mailing it to a news outlet. Here’s what we know about the case so far.

Winner's Arrest

Winner is a contractor with Pluribus International Corporation, working in a U.S. government facility in Georgia, according to the criminal complaint. She’s been working in that location since mid-February and had top-secret clearance.

The Intercept is not named in the complaint, but it says the government became aware of the breach when a news outlet reached out to an unnamed government agency about an upcoming story in late May. According to the search warrant affidavit, a reporter tried to verify the document with a government contractor with whom he had a previous relationship. The reporter texted photos of the report on May 24, saying he received it in the mail, and it was postmarked “Augusta, Georgia.” The contractor initially told the reporter the document appeared to be fake, but they reported the interaction to the government agency anyway. The reporter later informed the contractor that an official at the agency had verified the documents.

Investigators noted that the pages were creased, which suggested they were printed out, then carried out of a secure facility and sent to the media outlet. An internal probe determined only six people had printed the document, including Winner. The employees’ desk computers were searched, and investigators found Winner was the only one who had email contact with the news outlet in question.

Just a reminder, colour printers spy on you. This one embedded the exact time a US government employee printed a subsequently leaked doc. https://t.co/wDYfpGl1vy

The email contact described in the search warrant affidavit has nothing to do with the document. It says Winner used her private Gmail address to request a podcast transcript, and the news outlet responded to confirm her subscription.

“As we reported in the story, the NSA document was provided to us anonymously,” Vivian Siu, the Intercept’s director of communications, told CNN. “The Intercept has no knowledge of the identity of the source,” Siu said.

FBI agents arrested Winner at her home on Saturday, June 3. The complaint says that as agents were searching her home, Winner admitted to intentionally printing out the classified report, taking it out of the facility, and mailing it to an online news outlet a few days later.

“Exceptional law enforcement efforts allowed us quickly to identify and arrest the defendant,” Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said in a statement. “Releasing classified material without authorization threatens our nation’s security and undermines public faith in government. People who are trusted with classified information and pledge to protect it must be held accountable when they violate that obligation.”

The Charges Against Winner

Winner was charged under the Espionage Act and faces up to ten years in prison for leaking classified information. According to the New York Times, conventional leak cases usually result in prison terms of one to three years. Electronic data has made it easier to trace leaks, and the Obama administration prosecuted nine or ten leak-related cases, which is double the number of cases brought by all previous administrations.

Winner appeared in court on Monday but has yet to enter a plea. Her court-appointed attorney, Titus Nichols, said she remains in jail pending a detention hearing set for Thursday in Augusta. He expects the government will want to keep her behind bars until the trial, but he said she should be released. “She has no criminal history; it’s not as if she’s a threat to anyone,’’ he said.

Winner's Background

Winner’s mother, Billie Winner-Davis, spoke to several news outlets. She toldTheGuardian that her daughter was born in Texas in 1991 and raised in the small suburb of Kingsville, which is about 40 miles from Corpus Christi. She has one sister who is studying for a PhD in pharmacology.

Winner was an active-duty member of the Air Force from January 2013 until she began working for Pluribus International in February. Her mother said she worked as a linguist for the Air Force and speaks Farsi, Dari, and Pashto.

Winner-Davis seemed confused by the charges and unsure of what to make of her daughter’s alleged actions. She said when Winner called her family on Sunday she asked for help relocating her cat and dog, but didn’t say much about her situation. Winner-Davis described her daughter’s mood as “touch and go.”

“I think she’s trying to be brave for me,” Winner-Davis said. “I don’t think she’s seeing a light at the end of the tunnel.”

Winner's Politics

Winner-Davis told the Daily Beast that her daughter is “very passionate about her views” but wasn’t very politically active.

“I never thought this would be something she would do,” Winner-Davis said. “I mean, she has expressed to me that she is not a fan of Trump – but she’s not someone who would go and riot or picket.”

She said Winner did not discuss her job, and never expressed support for other famous leakers like Edward Snowden. “She’s never ever given me any kind of indication that she was in favor of that at all,” her mother said. “I don’t know how to explain it.”

However, on her social-media accounts, Winner did make it very clear that she was unhappy with the White House’s current occupant. On Election Night, she tweeted under the name Sara Winners “Well. People Suck.” She made frequent use of the #notmypresident hashtag and shared various left-leaning tweets.

👏congrats #TTP, I couldn't even address the new potus with half of the civility you displayed, hope it works out for you all https://t.co/swVSpEX6YE

Winner discussed politics on Facebook as well, between posts about her pets and her rigorous workout routine. “On a positive note, this Tuesday when we become the United States of the Russian Federation, Olympic lifting will be the national sport,” she joked a day before the election.

Reaction to Winner's Arrest

By Tuesday morning, Winner’s Facebook page was riddled with abusive remarks, with commenters calling her “traitor” and far worse.

Winner’s attorney, Titus Nichols, said, “She’s just been caught in the middle of something bigger than her.”

Alleged NSA whistleblower Reality Leigh Winner must be supported. She is a young women accused of courage in trying to help us know. pic.twitter.com/B4aIdt7qz6

Virginia senator Tim Kaine, who was Hillary Clinton’s running mate, said on CNN that people who leak classified information should be prosecuted, but Americans also need to know more about Russia’s election meddling.

“Somebody who leaks documents against laws has got to suffer the consequences” Kaine said. “But the American public is also entitled to know the degree to which Russia invaded the election to take the election away from American voters.”

ACLU attorney Patrick Toomey put Winner’s alleged leak in a more positive light. “Leaks to journalists occur every day, as they have for decades, and are a vital source of information for the public in our democracy,” he told the Huffington Post. “It would be deeply troubling if this prosecution marked the beginning of a draconian crackdown on leaks to the press by the Trump administration.”

Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, uses an unofficial online messaging service for official White House business, including with foreign contacts, his lawyer told the House Oversight Committee late last year.

The lawyer, Abbe Lowell, said he was not aware if Mr. Kushner had communicated classified information on the service, WhatsApp, and said that because he took screenshots of the communications and sent them to his official White House account or the National Security Council, his client was not in violation of federal records laws.

In a letter disclosing the information, the Democratic chairman of the House Oversight and Reform Committee said that he was investigating possible violations of the Presidential Records Act by members of the Trump administration, including Mr. Kushner and his wife, Ivanka Trump. He accused the White House of stonewalling his committee on information it had requested for months.

Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) on Thursday urged President Donald Trump to stop disparaging the late Sen. John McCain, calling the Vietnam war hero “a dear friend” and defending him against the president’s criticisms. …

Ernst’s remarks came during a town hall meeting at a high school in Adel, Iowa, where several attendees voiced anger about Trump’s attacks about McCain. One attendee described McCain as a “genuine war hero” and called Trump’s comments about McCain “cowardly.”

“I do not appreciate his tweets,” Ernst said, when pressed by the attendee why she didn’t previously speak out more forcefully. “John McCain is a dear friend of mine. So, no I don’t agree with President Trump and he does need to stop.”

As we anticipate the end of Mueller, signs of a wind-down:-SCO prosecutors bringing family into the office for visits-Staff carrying out boxes-Manafort sentenced, top prosecutor leaving-office of 16 attys down to 10-DC US Atty stepping up in cases-grand jury not seen in 2mo

For Boeing and other aircraft manufacturers, the practice of charging to upgrade a standard plane can be lucrative. Top airlines around the world must pay handsomely to have the jets they order fitted with customized add-ons.

Sometimes these optional features involve aesthetics or comfort, like premium seating, fancy lighting or extra bathrooms. But other features involve communication, navigation or safety systems, and are more fundamental to the plane’s operations.

Many airlines, especially low-cost carriers like Indonesia’s Lion Air, have opted not to buy them — and regulators don’t require them. Now, in the wake of the two deadly crashes involving the same jet model, Boeing will make one of those safety features standard as part of a fix to get the planes in the air again.

… Boeing’s optional safety features, in part, could have helped the pilots detect any erroneous readings. One of the optional upgrades, the angle of attack indicator, displays the readings of the two sensors. The other, called a disagree light, is activated if those sensors are at odds with one another.

Boeing will soon update the MCAS software, and will also make the disagree light standard on all new 737 Max planes, according to a person familiar with the changes, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they have not been made public. The angle of attack indicator will remain an option that airlines can buy.

Attorneys for New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft and more than a dozen other defendants charged in a Florida prostitution sting filed a motion to stop the public release of surveillance videos and other evidence taken by police.

Attorneys filed the motion Wednesday in Palm Beach County court. The State of Florida does not agree with the request, according to the filing.

In the motion, the attorneys asked the court to grant a protective order to safeguard the confidentiality of the materials seized from the Orchids of Asia Day Spa in Jupiter, and “in particular the videos, until further order of the court.”

Two years in, White House aides are dismayed to discover the president likes lobbing pointless, nasty attacks at people like George Conway and John McCain

But the saga has left even White House aides accustomed to a president who bucks convention feeling uncomfortable. While the controversies may have pushed aside some bad news, they also trampled on Trump’s Wednesday visit to an army tank manufacturing plant in swing state Ohio.

“For the most part, most people internally don’t want to touch this with a 10-foot pole,” said one former senior White House official. A current senior White House official said White House aides are making an effort “not to discuss it in polite company.” Another current White House official bemoaned the tawdry distraction. “It does not appear to be a great use of our time to talk about George Conway or dead John McCain. … Why are we doing this?

When Mr. Trump was running for president, he promised to personally stop American companies from shutting down factories and moving plants abroad, warning that he would punish them with public backlash and higher taxes. Many companies scrambled to respond to his Twitter attacks, announcing jobs and investments in the United States — several of which never materialized.

But despite Mr. Trump’s efforts to compel companies to build and hire, they appear to be increasingly prioritizing their balance sheets over political backlash.

“I don’t think there’s as much fear,” said Gene Grabowski, who specializes in crisis communications for the public relations firm Kglobal. “At first it was a shock to the system, but now we’ve all adjusted. We take it in stride, and I think that’s what the business community is doing.”

There’s no specific stipulation that Milo must be heard, so it could be worse

President Trump is expected to issue an executive order Thursday directing federal agencies to tie research and education grants made to colleges and universities to more aggressive enforcement of the First Amendment, according to a draft of the order viewed by The Wall Street Journal.

The order instructs agencies including the Departments of Education, Health and Human Services and Defense to ensure that public educational institutions comply with the First Amendment, and that private institutions live up to their own stated free-speech standards.

The order falls short of what some university officials feared would be more sweeping or specific measures; it doesn’t prescribe any specific penalty that would result in schools losing research or other education grants as a result of specific policies.

Tech companies say that it is easier to identify content related to known foreign terrorist organizations such as ISIS and Al Qaeda because of information-sharing with law enforcement and industry-wide efforts, such as the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism, a group formed by YouTube, Facebook, Microsoft, and Twitter in 2017.

On Monday, for example, YouTube said on its Twitter account that it was harder for the company to stop the video of the shootings in Christchurch than to remove copyrighted content or ISIS-related content because YouTube’s tools for content moderation rely on “reference files to work effectively.” Movie studios and record labels provide reference files in advance and, “many violent extremist groups, like ISIS, use common footage and imagery,” YouTube wrote.

The cycle is self-reinforcing: The companies collect more data on what ISIS content looks like based on law enforcement’s myopic and under-inclusive views, and then this skewed data is fed to surveillance systems, Bloch-Wehba says. Meanwhile, consumers don’t have enough visibility in the process to know whether these tools are proportionate to the threat, whether they filter too much content, or whether they discriminate against certain groups, she says.

Two mystery litigants citing privacy concerns are making a last-ditch bid to keep secret some details in a lawsuit stemming from wealthy financier Jeffrey Epstein’s history of paying underage girls for sex.

Just prior to a court-imposed deadline Tuesday, two anonymous individuals surfaced to object to the unsealing of a key lower-court ruling in the case, as well as various submissions by the parties.

Both people filed their complaints in the New York-based 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals, which is overseeing the case. The two people said they could face unwarranted speculation and embarrassment if the court makes public records from the suit, in which Virginia Giuffre, an alleged Epstein victim, accused longtime Epstein friend Ghislaine Maxwell of engaging in sex trafficking by facilitating his sexual encounters with teenage girls. Maxwell has denied the charges.